Earth Hour: What's the point?

Earth Hour came and went a few days ago and for one hour from 8:30 pm on 27 March this is what I did differently from the day before or the day before that: Nothing.

My hall lights were on, as was the TV. My computer was put to sleep but was still plugged in, its charger consuming a little phantom power. Most of the other stuff in the flat was either off or running as it normally does.

I’m very cynical about Earth Hour simply because I see it as a way normally profligate consumers of electricity assuage their feelings of guilt. For one hour, these chaps get to feel good about themselves by sitting around in semi darkness, patting themselves on the back for saving the world a few barrels of oil. Then at 9:30, weak-kneed and flush with feel-goodism, they switch on their air-conditioners, halogen lights, flat-screen TVs and surround-sound systems, or get out into their three-and-a-half litre BMWs and motor down to a pub in a haze of unleaded to meet up with their similarly self-congratulating friends over a glass of Perrier or Brazilian coffee.

I’m sorry, it just doesn’t work for me.

I’d much rather look at how we can live better and greener the whole 24 hours in a day rather than just that one hour per year. Yes, yes I know Earth Hour is supposed to help bring long-term change, but just ask yourself what long-term change have you effected in your life as a result of Earth Hour?

Dubai reckons it saved 170,000 kWh during Earth Hour in 2009. This is roughly 102,000 kgs of CO2. Nice. Now ask yourself how much we would save if everyone who drives on a PLUS highway drove at 115 km/h instead of 125 km/h (yes, we all want to drive just that little bit beyond the speed limit, and yes, I am being a little simplistic here - bear with me). At the less-fast speed, if you’re driving between Singapore and KL, you arrive just 15 minutes later than at the faster speed, but you would have saved about 10 - 15% on your fuel bill and you would have emitted about 65 kg less CO2 (or about 0.03 kgs less per km traveled).

Now, over 1,000,000 vehicles use the PLUS North-South highway every day. Just imagine if each one could reduce their fuel consumption by 10%. Now I don’t have the figures for how many vehicle-kilometres are travelled on the North-South Highway, but just going by what I think is a conservative estimate of 150 km/car, we get these figures:
150 km/car x 1,000,000 vehicles = 150,000,000 vehicle-kms per day.

Assuming (told you I would be simplistic) an average of 11.3 L/100 km per car (and that’s a conservative estimate), and assuming a savings of 10% of that you would save 1,695,000 litres of fuel each day.

Here’s another very rough estimate: Using the figure of 0.03 kg less CO2 emitted per km, we get an astonishing reduction of 4,500,000 kgs of CO2 emitted each and every day, just on the PLUS North-South highway. Or 187,500 kgs every hour. Much more than Earth Hour achieved in Dubai.
And all it took was a speed reduction of about 10 km/h.

I’m going to write about some of the simple things we can do around the house which can help us save some power and money and will take you through some of the stuff I have done. I’ve still got some way to go yet, but as I said at the start of this post, I’m constantly looking for ways to live greener and better, every hour of every day.